I seriously doubt we will see that high a resolution. Even regular displays don't have that kinda res until you reach 30" displays meant for people who work with graphics daily.

It would also mean that games would have to be run at a lower resolution and upscaled or alternatively would need to have very low quality textures because the devices don't have enough VRAM (do they even have any?) to handle that high a res with lots of textures.

I recently had a chance to try the iPad and despite being used to my iPhone 4's resolution, the iPad's didn't feel all that bad. I felt that a minor upgrade would be sufficient to make it feel like a "retina display".

It's a shame we still seem to be far away from haptic feedback on touchscreens. That's what I truly want before switching from a Macbook Pro to an iPad. It also wouldn't hurt having support for at least Flash video...

That is certainly one area in which Apples position can be devastating to others.

I think Ive seen one vendor use the 960x640 display of the iPhone. Im not sure if it was IPS or if it ever shipped. I think it was for Japan only. I dont think Ive seen any vendor match or exceed the iPhones pixel density or total pixels. The max for Android phones still seems to be 854x480.

edit: It was a Sharp IS03 for KDDI au in Japan. It isnt IPS but it is Sharps equivalent, ASV.

You can't deny that the CES videos of the playbook and honeycomb blows away the ipad in every single way.

I won't deny them anything, but I also won't condone them either. I've been in the computer industry since 1976 and seen too many great demo products that never transitioned well into a finished product.

I will wait to see actual shipping products and evaluate them then.

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." Douglas Adams

I won't deny them anything, but I also won't condone them either. I've been in the computer industry since 1976 and seen too many great demo products that never transitioned well into a finished product.

I will wait to see actual shipping products and evaluate them then.

Fair enough, i mean we all know what happened with the MS courier. I think google and honeycomb are a lot different, and they are not going to show vapour ware. If anything, we can bet that honeycomb will be better than the demo's at CES, and contain MORE cool things. But overall I agree, until we can put the iPad 2, a honeycomb tablet, and the playbook onto the same table as finished products, we won't know for sure. Right now apple hasn't played any of it's card, but RIM and Google have, so I think apple is in a really good position to take the lead once again.

That last iPhone update with the retina display and new body was a very aggressive update. Except for the iPods, it was one of the most ambitious upgrades I've seen from Apple.

It would appear that Jobs wants to put some distance between Apple's mobile kit and the rest of the players.

Even knowing that Apple is putting so much energy into their iPhones and iPads, such an upgrade as this thread suggests seems a little too ambitious. I would be overjoyed to see it and am excited as hell to see how Apple responds to its competitors with its v2 product.

But 4 x the resolution and much faster GPUs and new CPU, more ram, and same or better battery life?

How many of us would upgrade? My guess would be 70%+. Craigslist better get ready.....

Apple has reportedly slipped multiple examples of "@2" graphics in versions of its iBooks app, one targeted at iPhone 4 and another at a high resolution future iPad, according to tweets and a separate developer report.

As mentioned earlier, trying to push that many pixels natively in a game would be very difficult so they will be running at a non-native resolution. The iPad probably doesn't even need a retina display. If they can manage it and it works fine, ok but it seems more like the apps are being prepared for use on the Mac.

If this is true, it's going to blow the top off my skull. I seriously don't think they could put a display of that quality in such a low cost product. Especially when you look at what the competition are offering for the same price. It'd need a beefier CPU/GPU and more RAM. They'd still have to get a 10 hour battery life. It'd still need something like IPS for view angle. Can they do this? It sure looks like they plan to.

Here's your iPad3 that's in the source code. It's the version you can only order from Apple. ...What we've been waiting for... Then again, maybe just me. They do offer upgradable products on their other 'more advanced' product lines.

I've seen a few iPad 2 suggestions and they have me thinking a couple of interesting things. I think I have a bit of a unique perspective for these forums because I currently have an android 2.2 phone that I LOVE, and the videos from CES of the android honeycomb tablets have been really steering me away from apple. After seeing the videos of honeycomb and the playbook at CES I knew 100% in my mind the the iPad 2 would probably not compete, and that unless apple stepped up with great hardware AND a major iOS revision, I was going with honeycomb. Now after reading through the speculation in this thread it has me a bit excited, but let me explain. Right now i'm not in the position of an apple fanboy that will buy anything apple releases for the iPad 2 and is just hoping for the best specs possible, i'm in the position of an android user that sees honeycomb competing and wanting to get the best value for my dollar.

Now seeing these specs posted in this thread makes me excited, and makes me think "hell ya, if apple did that I think they would win me over from honeycomb and i'd buy the iPad 2 instead no question".

Now my 'old school' mentality for these kinds of crazy upgraded specs from apple would be "never going to happen". With apple the give you the LEAST that they can, while charging the most that they can. These specs not only MATCH what the other android tablets are providing, but they are actually beating it by a good margin (well the CPU, Ram, and possibly GPU are just matching the new android tablets, but the screen would be destroying them). Usually what happens is you think of what you would really WANT apple to provide, and think of the competition and what apple would need to provide to MATCH them, and then drop that down quite a bit and that is what you'll get.

So my old school thinking goes "hell no apple doesn't compete like that, they use the app store and iOS as selling points and keep the specs lower than competition in order to keep margins high". So then we might expect...

BUT, then I start thinking about those first specs I posted, the crazy ones people are speculating in this thread based on the image leaks in 4.3. I think about how they made me feel about the iPad in comparison to the awesome stuff we saw at CES from honeycomb and the playbook. Even most apple fanboys were watching those videos and saying "ok apple, check mate" cause for the first time google and RIM not only matched the iPad, but totally blew it away on the hardware and software side. So maybe apple will take things seriously and really blow us away in turn with the specs, which it doesn't normally do. Like people in this thread are saying if they can come out with the high end specs listed above, but sell 40 million units (lets say maybe if they come out with the lower end specs I listed above, they might sell 30 million units because people like me and many other might go over to honeycomb or RIM) they are still turning huge profit in numbers AND getting tons more users for the app store and iAds.

Coming from partial outsider view with my android phone replacing my ipod touch and my desire to get an iphone, completely, I was thinking about the lower specs shown above and thinking "without a major iOS overhaul, and I mean MAJOR update, I will probably go with a tegra 2 honeycomb tablet", but with the specs above I was thinking "holy shit that looks awesome, even though honeycomb looks great I'm going to get the iPad 2 even if the iOS update doesn't quite match honeycomb". Those specs look so good I would be swayed over and I think a lot of other sceptical people would too.

This is probably juts wishful thinking and we'll probably see something more like the lower end specs I posted above, but man wouldn't that be cool to see apple step up and squash the competition? I mean really, with iOS, the app store, iAds, etc... this isn't a hardware pushing game anymore, this is a battle of online ecosystems where you want to be able to tell developers/advertisers that you have XXX million people on your system. If the iPad 2 is so spectacular that people have to turn away the already impressive looking playbook and honeycomb tablets, then apple can say "hey we sold 40 million this year and honeycomb/playbook sold only a couple million" and guess where developers/advertisers will go?

It could be a case of the earlier iphones where apple had a lot better hardware ready to go, but put in the minimum they needed based on the competition. For a few years there was no smartphone competition and apple could reign with minimal updates, and then all of a sudden android starts taking over and so apple releases the iphone 4 (probably one of the most drastic hardware upgrades we've seen from apple) with new case, retina display, more ram, better CPU, better camera, front facing camera, etc...

I could see the same thing happening now going to the iPad 2, only earlier now because the competition was more ready to jump at apple and fight back.

As mentioned earlier, trying to push that many pixels natively in a game would be very difficult so they will be running at a non-native resolution. The iPad probably doesn't even need a retina display. If they can manage it and it works fine, ok but it seems more like the apps are being prepared for use on the Mac.

I would be content to play games at 1024x768 res whilst everything else running at native res such ad reading books, web, video etc. the text would be so sharp!

I knew it. And when I spoke it here, I was ridiculed. Well then, I really hope they can do it. If there's any company in the world right now with the ability to do such a thing, it's Apple. If they can bring themselves to build a product with that kind of resolution, I'll surely buy it

iPad 2 will have an amazing display. But it will be so amazing any advantage iPad 2 has in terms of power and RAM increase will be used up by this iPad 2 display. So essentially, when all is said and does iPad 2 will still have the same RAM constraints as iPad 1, but with a better looking display and 2 cameras. Safari, other apps and the iPad itself will still max out and slow down prematurely.

I hope I'm wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I love the iPad, but it maxes-out a tad to early to be so great it brings me to tears.

I'm not an android fanboy, i've just used a good android phone with 2.2 and find it to be better than iOS in many ways (although the market place is garbage compared to the app store, which obviously is a huge deal and makes iOS much better for multimedia). And I know that most people on these forums are apple fan boys.

Bull. You ARE an Android fanboy and it shows in everything you say. And you think you will have something some day in Android that will blow the socks off last year's iPad. Wow. No kidding. You've been given a sneak peak at something Android will have one day and since Apple doesn't do sneak peaks all you have to go on to compare the two is your imagination. Why not wait and see what the new iPad has and compare it to what the new Android has (key word is "has", not "will have").

That's a tad pessimistic. And unsupported by evidence or history. It's not like Steve's going to say "Oh, and one more thing... the iPad 2 is gonna start at $1999." Apple would not shoot themselves in the brain like that.

Im still not sold on this, then again I wasnt on the iPhone 4 display until we had some proof coming out of China.

1) The biggest issue with sourcing components came from the display.

2) The resolution isnt bad and it already pushes more pixels than those other 7 tablets. Sure, they have a higher ppi, but in regards to the GPU you need more RAM and a more powerful system to push it. Is the PowerVR SGX453 rumoured to be coming up to that task?

Before you say yes, note these simple stats.

iPhone 3GS: 480x320 = 153,600 pixels

iPhone 4: 960x640 = 614,400 pixels

iPad 1: 1024x768 = 786,432 pixels

iPad 2: 2048x1536 = 3,145,728 pixels

Thats a huge jump. How will game play be affected? How with UI performance be affected? How will battery life be affected? Personally, I dont want to lose a second of battery life for a higher resolution display.

Yeah, they got it wrong. Its quadruple the number of pixels, but its only double the resolution, since resolution is resolved by perpendicular axes.

The equation is: 3438 * (1/n ppi) = number of inches youll need to hold it from your face.

or: 3438 * (1/n) = the pixels per inch along one axis the display much have.

These are based on 20/20 vision.

Truthfully, you know zero about what the Apple A5 is capable of. So no matter how many times between now and the announcement you repost this same point, you're not contributing anything useful. We all get it. 3 million pixels is a lot to push. We'll see what happens.

I promised myself I wasn't going to upgrade my iPad for a couple of years. It looked like that was going to easy when the rumors said cameras and bigger speaker. Now they're saying dual core CPU, improved GPU and double resolution display. Sure, make me a liar!

Fair enough, i mean we all know what happened with the MS courier. I think google and honeycomb are a lot different, and they are not going to show vapour ware. If anything, we can bet that honeycomb will be better than the demo's at CES, and contain MORE cool things. But overall I agree, until we can put the iPad 2, a honeycomb tablet, and the playbook onto the same table as finished products, we won't know for sure. Right now apple hasn't played any of it's card, but RIM and Google have, so I think apple is in a really good position to take the lead once again.

I think you will be partisan anyway. Lets forget about Playbook. Its battery life was revealed to be 3 hours or so at the CES conference. It runs web apps, that is dead in the water.

Possibly google can do something. I doubt it. The modern "geek" who enthuses over cpu, gpu, and RAM is about as aware of how an OS actually works as a 13th century peasant was aware of string theory. Learning Java and C# is not enough to understand this.

Yesterday I saw a link to a Oracle developer who compared JAVA SE ( embedded JVM) to Davlik. SE ran 2.5 times faster across all benchmarks ( although he couldn't test the UI). Compiled code would run much faster still. ( And this is clear on Android phones - they are slow and stuttery even when they dont have to do very much. Ask them to run Angry Birds and they fail. Thats a 2D game).

Apple have had, until recent;y, a JVM team helping Sun/Oracle. That team was not the OS team because a JVM is not an OS.

About 40% of the people on iOS/OS X ( which shares low level components) work on

1) The Compiler.
2) The Kernel
3) WindowServer team - which hands off the most efficient code from Core Animation, Open GL, and all windows to the GPU.
4) The API team which designs API to be as thread aware as possible - take into account GCD.
5) Power management
6) (new). A chip design team.

That's an OS team. A JVM team is not an OS. Davlik is at least 2.5 times slower than an equivalent tasks on JAVA SE - more compared to iOS ( 4 or 5?)?

All of this is less visible on a small screen. Nevertheless I always get glitches on any Android phone I use. Thats probably lack of GPU acceleration, which is a problem for them as they dont know what devices will have what graphics card.

This "OS" doesnt even have drivers for graphic cards. It is up to manufacturers. Even with that - not available now - they wont have the Apple expertise. And even then their main thread is gettin continually blocked with garbage collection, and their multi-threaded story is a mess. Andoird is not an OS company. they can no more "blow" Apple away in the iPad space then they could write an OS and blow Apple away in the Netbook space. ( As for RIM - a web OS with no apps?)

All of the glitches clearly visible to any Android user will be amplified in the release of any tablet which even tries to match the iPad ( although they are inevitably going to target 7 inch devices).

If APple can pull this high resolution malarky off they may never catch up.

It is all the same iOS. No fragmentation exists according to some prolific commentators.

I think that they like to play word games.

There is a "fragmentation" between the iPad and the iPhone/iPod touch. Not for games which can scale up, or use different textures. For everybody else the UI should really be re-designed, see the difference between Notes on the iPhone and the iPad.

( So not a real fragmentation issue: it is a different device. The OS is the same - iOS. Which isnt guaranteed on Android, and is what is normally meant by Android fragmentation).

For the other "fragmentation" issues, no code is needed just a different set of default icons and you are done. You just rename the better looking icons to include @2. That will be true of the two resolutions in iPad. The coding cost is zero. design cost is trivial.

Scaling by non integer values does introduce significant distortion, especially for text and straight lines. I suppose you could windowbox the game though. That might work.

I wonder what pre-iPhone-4 apps will look like on it at 4x zoom.

How many such apps are still out there? By now, that would likely either be an app that the user neglected to update, or the dev abandoned.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pmz

Truthfully, you know zero about what the Apple A5 is capable of. So no matter how many times between now and the announcement you repost this same point, you're not contributing anything useful. We all get it. 3 million pixels is a lot to push. We'll see what happens.

That's the best policy. I've been avoiding the rumor and speculation stories a lot more in the last year, in part because discussing rumor stories just a way to pass time, and I have less time now. It's also impossible to verify. It's certainly not worth jumping to conclusions until it really becomes news with an announcement, it's just entertainment.

On the day the iPhones retina display came out, I planned to sell my iPad. When you want to revolutionize print media, I guess you got to get near to the printed resolution. And who cares more about typography than Steve Jobs. This is why I want to believe these rumors. If all these tech specs are true + less reflective glass, personal hotspot on iPhone and all these new sophisticated apps for iPad it will be a perfect mobile device. Simply hoping for it.

That's the best policy. I've been avoiding the rumor and speculation stories a lot more in the last year, in part because discussing rumor stories just a way to pass time, and I have less time now. It's also impossible to verify. It's certainly not worth jumping to conclusions until it really becomes news with an announcement, it's just entertainment.

(although the market place is garbage compared to the app store, which obviously is a huge deal and makes iOS much better for multimedia). And I know that most people on these forums are apple fan boys.

I'm trying to give you guys an 'outside' opinion from what 99% of the posts on this forum are (i.e. apple fanboys who are so busy nut-hugging steve jobs that they would pie a big turd if it had an apple logo stamped on it). You can't deny that the CES videos of the playbook and honeycomb blows away the ipad in every single way.

My point is that apple fanboys (forum members here) will buy the iPad regardless of whether the specs are great or bad, or there is a big or small iOS update. Honeycomb tablets could come out that blow away the iPad in EVERY sense, and you guys would still look down on it and praise the pants off of apple.

I'm giving you a more realistic viewpoint from other people who are NOT apple fanboys, and who are interested in the best product for the money. Now I KNOW that there are tons of people who aren't fanboys, that will buy the iPad because it's trendy and who don't know the difference between ram, rom, gpu, cpu, etc... These would be most all people, so really what i'm talking about are the techies and nerds, and even people who are typically anti-apple.

These people may buy an iPad 2 regardless of their previous dislike, or preference for android, if apple really steps up their game and puts up some awesome stats. I will buy one without hesitation if apple does this. On these forums most of these discussions are pointless in the end, because all of these fanboys are going to buy it regardless. They are just having fun discussing rumours and specs, and hoping for the best. There ARE other people who aren't like this and will actually consider other options and not just buy apple because it's apple.

It's good that right off the bat you admit the marketplace is crap and the app store great. This is true. It was not necessary for you to add "for multimedia" to that. That's just weird, possibly confused, I can't tell. It's great for software, period. Now I want you to keep this important feature of iOS in mind as we go through your other statements.

It's really idiotic of you to go to a forum and call everyone there fanboys as you have done, several times, and for no good reason. I'm not saying you're an idiot, I'm not even calling you a fanboy, I don't know if those things are true. But it's idiotic of you to sling the fanboy accusation around when you're trying to convince people of your ideas.

You are really lost on why people buy iPads. No doubt there are lots of reasons, since the iPad can do alot of different things very well (one of them you even mentioned... it has great software!). If you honestly think the only reason people buy computers is because of raw hardware stats, well then why don't you go buy a ton of ram chips and cpus and make the biggest pile from them you can! Maybe having a bigger stack will make your computing experience more better! Or perhaps even the betterest!

I can say that the CES videos of playbook and honeycomb are definitely not compelling at all. They do not, in fact, 'blow away the iPad in every single way'. I think you must've had your rose colored glasses on when you were watching those videos. Here, I'll specifically list for you why they are inferior to iPad 1 (nowhere comparable to whatever iPad 2 might be):

Poor battery life, most likely less than the iPad. In the case of the playbook, alot less.

Weak ecosystem, lack of software.

Overpriced or no price listed (no price listed because its vapor and they don't really know when, if ever, their tablet will ship).

It's not necessary for me to go any further with that list. Between battery life, lack of software and just the fact that none of it is actually shipping, I wouldn't want to downgrade from my iPad to something like that.

Finally as for your statement about getting the best product for the money, well I think you managed to disprove your own assertions. It's hard to beat a complete package like the iPad at $500, especially when the competition will generally be charging more money for less features overall. Yes it is possible for you to get an android 2.2 tablet for $200 if you search around enough, but it will be 3x as thick, 2x as heavy and have a 2 hour battery life (3 hours on standby). But hey, it has a camera, so it must be better right? Maybe its got more ram too, not that you can do anything with it. Heck its got a USB port and HDMI, which might be useful if it didnt crash all the time, or run out of juice before you could get it plugged in and working.

I just gave you the more realistic viewpoint, the one called 'reality'.

I'm not an android fanboy, i've just used a good android phone with 2.2 and find it to be better than iOS in many ways (although the market place is garbage compared to the app store, which obviously is a huge deal and makes iOS much better for multimedia). And I know that most people on these forums are apple fan boys.

I'm trying to give you guys an 'outside' opinion from what 99% of the posts on this forum are (i.e. apple fanboys who are so busy nut-hugging steve jobs that they would pie a big turd if it had an apple logo stamped on it). You can't deny that the CES videos of the playbook and honeycomb blows away the ipad in every single way.

My point is that apple fanboys (forum members here) will buy the iPad regardless of whether the specs are great or bad, or there is a big or small iOS update. Honeycomb tablets could come out that blow away the iPad in EVERY sense, and you guys would still look down on it and praise the pants off of apple.

I'm giving you a more realistic viewpoint from other people who are NOT apple fanboys, and who are interested in the best product for the money. Now I KNOW that there are tons of people who aren't fanboys, that will buy the iPad because it's trendy and who don't know the difference between ram, rom, gpu, cpu, etc... These would be most all people, so really what i'm talking about are the techies and nerds, and even people who are typically anti-apple.

These people may buy an iPad 2 regardless of their previous dislike, or preference for android, if apple really steps up their game and puts up some awesome stats. I will buy one without hesitation if apple does this. On these forums most of these discussions are pointless in the end, because all of these fanboys are going to buy it regardless. They are just having fun discussing rumours and specs, and hoping for the best. There ARE other people who aren't like this and will actually consider other options and not just buy apple because it's apple.

Honeycomb? You mean the videos of what Honeycomb "maybe" will be? I wasn't really impressed either way. I thought the Blackberry Playbook looked nice, superior to Honeycomb in many ways. They're getting closer, but we'll see how it looks when it's in the real world and other factors like apps and battery come into play. And I don't have a lot of faith in Google products in general these days.

I've tried again and again to not be an Apple fan. I've mistakenly bought "powerful" PC's that competed with Mac Pro's on the hardware front at half the price, only to deal with countless OS issues related to Windows that dampened the effects of superior hardware. I didn't buy an AT&T iPhone because I didn't want to deal with a crap carrier. What I come back to again and again though with Apple's products is that if I stop over-thinking specs and focus on actual usage, I'm always infinitely better off in terms of ease of use and efficiency with Apple products. I don't have to troubleshoot. Everything just works. The tweaker in me sometimes wishes I could change things, but in the end, all I ever ended up doing when "tweaking" other products was wasting a lot of time for a minimal impact.

Again, there are some things I like about other products, even Android phones. But at the end of the day, Apple offers the best complete solutions that work exceedingly well out of the box. I've played the game of trying to tell myself all the specs and capabilities I think I need and it's only lead to frustration and disappointment.

And let me stress, I don't want to be an Apple Fanboy as they tend to annoy me too. I'm not into blind enthusiasm. I'm into objectivity and real-world practicality. But when looking at the marketplace today, it really comes down to one thing for me...

I have never been frustrated or disappointed by an Apple device...and I've tried really hard to be.

It is all the same iOS. No fragmentation exists according to some prolific commentators.

I think that they like to play word games.

The point is that at this moment, developers only have to support two resolutions to make their apps compatible with all iOS devices ever shipped. There is no need to support the resolution of the iPhone 4 to make your app run it on it flawlessly. I bet you would not be able to tell me now (without checking each app very carefully) which of your apps has increased the resolution in response to the iPhone 4's display.

Unbelievable. The highest resolution display sold by Apple is 2560 by 1440 pixels on the 27" iMac and Cinema Display.
I can't see iPad 2 having nearly equal resolution on a 9.7" display. The hardware wont be able to handle it.

Why not? The 11" MacBook Air's GPU "Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on an external display, "
There are also rumours of an A5 for the iPad G2.

This is like the fifth time you've worried about battery life on this thread alone. What are you doing with the iPad that you're battery isn't satisfactory?

I use my iPad very extensively all day, everyday, and I've never come close to running out of power. I don't even plug it in at work like my iPhone, just at home at night, and I think I could even skip charging it for a day and it wouldn't matter. IMO battery power is the least of the iPad's worries.

My shopping list for iPad 2 in order of importance is:

- lighter! (I would give up half the current battery time if it would save half the weight)
- more powerful (working on large documents makes iPad 1.0 stutter and pause)
- more memory (currently can only really hold something like 1.5 open programs in memory)

Why not? The 11" MacBook Air's GPU "Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on an external display, "
There are also rumours of an A5 for the iPad G2.

Um... 2560x1600 on a 11" OS X display, the UI is not designed for that. Maybe Lion 10.7, but even then, this would require extensive OS X redesign. Which could come as OS X 10.8 is merged with iOS.